Preparation: Beat egg yolks until light and fluffy, whilst adding sugar a little at a time. Heat milk, cinnamon and nutmeg until near boiling. Add to egg yolks and whisk furiously. Add mixture to remaining milk, stirring continuously over heat until it thickens. Remove from heat and stir in cream. Leave to cool for one hour, then add in alcohol and vanilla essence. Then chill.

General Comments: DO NOT DRINK THIS WARM! Don't make the same mistake we did. Warm egg nog tastes like risotto thrown into a blender. I have an almost unhealthy love for risotto, but even I realise that it should only be served al dente, not fluid.

Drunk when sufficiently chilled, however, and with enough nutmeg, this isn't too bad. It's sweet and thick and creamy, which is always a good combination, though it tastes so bad when warm I can't help wondering why people bother with it at Christmas. Really though, it's nothing above average, and considering the quite ridiculous level of preparation required to get it into my belly, I submit we all have better things we could be doing, or at least pummelling our internal organs with more readily assembled drinks.

Thursday, 12 March 2015

This obvious nod to Firefly is probably the most original
part of this whole damn film

What came first, the xenomorph or the facehugger?

Veterans of long-term blog perusal here will probably already know my feelings on 2001: A Space Odyssey. To sum up: the stuff with the apes takes far too long, the middle section is thoroughly devoid of recognisable emotion (HAL's death scene excepted), and the final section is such dreadful incomprehensible bobbins that it makes me nostalgic for the monkeys that kicked everything off.

I will bow to no-one regarding this admittedly tremendously unpopular critical position. But I will accept the argument, as was once made by a friend of mine, that the narrative of the film doesn't really give it any option but to end in nonsense. When David Bowman's journey concludes with him meeting an alien life-form utterly beyond his ability to process, it precludes our ability to process it either. We are no smarter or more evolved than Bowman, We can't grasp what he's seeing on any more useful a level than he can.

There is a similar idea which surfaces throughout Prometheus. Indeed, with the film's set-up involving an inscrutable alien presence which may have guided our evolution for purposes unknown, the idea is perhaps all too familiar. But if Prometheus cribs liberally from Kubrik's iconic film (as well as Alien, obviously), it does at least expand on the theme.